Steve Jobs: The man who changed the world

By Pramod DE SILVA

During Tuesday’s launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple Vice President Scott Forstall asked a simple question from Siri, the new voice assistance system featured on the phone. “Who are you?” Forstall asked. “I am a humble personal assistant” replied Siri. That is exactly what we want our gadgets to do, instead of complicating our lives further. Gadgets should help us live a little more easily, relax a bit and when occasion demands, be a little productive as well. Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs (56), who passed away just a day after the launch of the iPhone 4S by his successor Tim Cook, understood this perfectly. Siri is a perfect example of Jobs’ vision and ingenuity. And it was not even invented by him.

Steve Jobs

But Jobs realised the immense potential of the voice application and bought the company that invented it. With Jobs at the helm, Apple engineers refined the product to the point that you can almost carry on a conversation with your iPhone. Jobs knew that it is easier to speak than to type. Others knew it too, but they could not add this functionality to a device that we would all love to have.

Back in 1997, he presented to the world the innovation that now hosts Siri: A touchscreen phone called the iPhone. Jobs said at the time that touch and our fingers are tailor made for such an application.

That is what made Jobs different. Just as in the ads that Apple aired on TV, Jobs was smart enough to “think different(ly)”. He made gadgets that no one else even imagined, which have become objects of desire that many people cannot live without.

And in many cases, the technologies that ultimately came together in many Apple devices had existed for decades, without anyone connecting the dots. Take the iPad, for example. Touchscreens had existed for decades. Backlit LCD screens were nothing new. Wi Fi and 3G were everywhere, along with the Internet.

In fact, there were so-called ‘tablet’ computers that could perform really well and even turn into regular laptop computers with one twist of the screen.

But no one had combined all these technologies and the power of the Internet into one sleek device. Jobs commissioned no market research, but he knew that the consumer would lust for a device that enabled them to work and play without any hassle.

Thus the iPad was born. But he had one more trick up his (turtleneck) sleeve: he seamlessly integrated the services that the consumer wanted – books, music, movies, games, magazines and newspapers, the Web and yes, Apple’s very own App store offerings into the iPad. Want to track down a flight ‘live’? Just download the Flight Track Pro App and look it up. There are 500,000 apps to choose from, you can find an app for almost anything. Suddenly, all his competitors were scurrying to bring offerings that would emulate the iPad. In fact, more and more people are bypassing the traditional web and accessing it through Apps on Apple and other similar devices.

As President Barack Obama noted, most people actually learned about Jobs’ death through one of the devices that he invented. Jobs’ innovative streak was apparent from the day he set up Apple Computer in his garage with tech-savvy friend Steve Wozniack in 1976.

He refused to run with the pack. When Microsoft and its Personal Computer (PC) business was gaining ground, Jobs too could have become just another builder of PCs with Microsoft software and made good money too. But he opted not to. He persisted with Apple Mac computers, which have a totally different Operating System (the latest one is called Mac OS Lion).

But the big advantage was that everything – software, hardware and everything in between was built by Apple to its exacting standards.

In a conciliatory gesture, Apple later allowed dual booting with Windows in their Mac computers because the majority of computers out there are still PCs and Microsoft too made its software available for Mac users.

In fact, the simplicity of later versions of Windows is a nod to Mac OS, which was always easy to master. Jobs did the same for music.

iPod Nano

Sony, once the leader in personal music with its Walkman line, could not grasp the stark reality that physical sales of music were declining and it did not have a proper MP3 player in its line-up. When Apple stepped into the arena with the 5 GB iPod (“1000 songs in your pocket”) in 2001, there were many MP3 players around from other manufacturers and plenty of illegal music sites.

But they lacked a legal music store which would make song downloading a breeze. Jobs did just that with the iTunes music store.

Other manufacturers could not simply sing from the same hymn sheet, leaving Apple to dominate the market. A lot of people do not know about Jobs’ other legacy; Pixar, the 3D animation studio.

Founded by Jobs in the wilderness years he spent out of Apple after being ousted in a power struggle with then CEO John Sculley in 1985, Pixar exemplifies his creative streak and penchant for taking risks. No one even gave CGI Toy Story a chance against Disney’s hand-drawn Pocahontas.

Having recently watched Toy Story on blu-ray, it becomes clear why the toy caper finally emerged as a huge favourite among children and adults alike. Pixar, which made a string of successful hits including Finding Nemo, was acquired by Disney in 2006, making Jobs a member of the Disney board. Jobs has thus left a rich legacy in almost every field of entertainment and technology – movies, music, publishing and computing. But the question for Apple (and Apple lovers) is, can anyone else fill Jobs’ shoes? Can it continue to wow people around the world with product after product? Is there another genius like him? Indeed, there are only a very few people out there who can match Jobs’ visual flair and unparalleled innovative streak in the technological landscape.

I can in fact think of only one right now – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently unveiled the Kindle Fire, thought by many to be the only device that can at least hope to come close to the iPad’s 30 million-unit sales figure. Indeed, an Apple without Jobs cannot afford to rest on its Jobs-era laurels – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Facebook are all fighting to take over the tech crown as well as our hearts and wallets. Jobs, of course, would have loved to give them a run for their money.

Regardless of what happens to Apple in the long term, millions of people the world over will remember Steve Jobs for what he was – a brilliant mind and a great visionary.

He will live on every time millions of people switch on their iDevices and listen to music, browse the web, use an App, play a game or watch a movie.

Thank you Steve, for fusing technology and our lives so inextricably, so seamlessly.